Feng Gao

Feng is the CEO of SODATA, a social enterprise that provides strategic consulting and technical assistance to make data flow and generate values. Before working on SODATA, Feng is the program director and board member of Shanghai Open Data Apps, the first open data competition in China that unlocks data resources from government and corporates for urban innovation. Feng is also the community leader, who serves as the local ambassador of Open Knowledge Foundation, and co-founded Open Data China, which is the first civic community building the open data ecosystem in China.

Feng obtained his PhD in Computer Science from University of Southampton. His PhD research focuses on exploring how to crowdsource people's food beliefs to give better feedback on whether a food is healthy. He envisions a data-driven approach to leverage people's thoughts to solve behavior change problems. His works involve focus group, interviews, surveys, prototypes and user studies.

Before he came to UK, he obtained his BE in Computer Science from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. In his spare time, he is a traveller and enjoys experimenting in different kinds of cooking. He loves different Chinese dialects and enjoy exploring Chinese traditional cultures.